During the past few years, the activist strain of central banking has spread around the world like wildfire, but the impact of this change on the future course of the global economy is very unclear. The number of countries involved now covers the developed world, the multitude of interventions in the financial market has expanded dramatically, and the amounts involved are exponentially higher than they were in 1979 when the Chrysler bailout began the process. Back then, the US Treasury guaranteed a $1.5 billion loan to the automaker, but the government demanded and received $2 billion in concessions from labor, the company, and other stakeholders. The star-crossed team of Treasury Secretary G. William Miller and President Jimmy Carter fell to Lee Iacocca’s political pressure 15 months before the 1980 election. This outcome differed dramatically from that of the Penn Central collapse, nine years before, as Congress had turned down its bailout request. By the mid-1980’s, the Chrysler rescue was seen as a great success, while everyone knew that the Penn Central refusal ended as a black hole, with many billions poured into Conrail and Amtrak just to keep the trains running.